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Faces from the Ice Age

Posted by timothy on from the shocking-discoveries dept.

Photoshop B.C. Edition writes: "Talk about data mining. Apparently some of those ice age cave paintings found throughout France actually may have, or had, some human portraits engraved, not on their walls, but on their floors. The controversial discovery was made at the Lascaux cave complex whose paintings date back around 15,000 years ago. This may explain why all the previous examples of cave paintings never depicted realistic representations of humans, while at the same time successfully representing realistic looking animals. (By the way, the one at the bottom of the article looks like Darth Maul ;)"

2 of 12 comments (clear)

  1. Re:i believe this outdates previous records by Ashurbanipal · · Score: 4, Interesting
    That early, people were not "people" as they are today.
    Depending on how you meant that, it's either very obvious or it's a good example of the tendency to dehumanize other races and tribes. Would you care to elaborate?
    It seems that capacity for symbolic representation began in the Upper Paleolithic
    Unless the archeological record is incomplete. I think it's just as likely that earlier art did not survive - there has to be some upper limit to the shelf life of prehistoric art, so maybe that's the barrier we've found and it has nothing to do with hominid capacities at all.

    I think you need a time machine to know for sure, but I'd like to hear the basis of your dating anyway!

  2. Re:i believe this outdates previous records by Ashurbanipal · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Perhaps some sort of protolanguage arose during this time. Intentional burials are the first evidence we have for any sort of symbolic act. These things all indicate the very beginnings of symbolic thought.
    I'd say symbolic thought probably precedes the activity that makes it distinguishable (archeologically) by millenia. For example, gorillas and whales are believed to be able to grasp fairly abstract concepts, definitely including symbolic representation in the case of gorillas. Perhaps symbolic representation 60,000 years ago was ritually restricted to song cycles (not necessarily language-songs like Australian dreamwalk songs, but symbolic sounds like whalesong). Guesswork of this sort is fun, the paucity of the archeological record is what makes it interesting.
    You must admit that, since we're talking about the very beginnings of symbolic thought (and that we, currently, are capable of language and symbolic thought far beyond this level) it's only appropriate to remind everyone here that these are not "people" we're talking about as we are people today.
    I see your point although I don't really agree with it; I think proto-hominids were people in all the ways that I personally measure people today. That's not to say I don't realize they were different people (just like Bushmen are different from Boers) but rather that I'd have phrased the observation a bit differently myself. Thank you for amplifying your comments, it was very gracious of you.